Addressing Therapy-Interfering Behaviors
DBT FoundationalDo you know what you wanted from me in that moment? Like, how do I you know, it took me I think I was looking this morning. I think it was like an hour, right, before you heard back from me for as a first response. Right? So do you know what you wanted me if I had responded quickly, do you know what you — what would have felt helpful in that moment? Need — I need your help to fix it. I just need to fix — I need to fix it.
Yeah. So I'm with you. Like, we're, we're on the fix it plan together. That's what we're trying to do. Right? What I'm wondering is so what I said then when so I think it was an hour. I said something about I mean, we don't have to we're not gonna go to the transcript. Right? But it's something about, like, I'm glad you took the walk.
I wish it had made everything feel better. Like, kind of, like, trying to sort of hear you and then suggest is there something you wanna do now to try to feel different? And that's when I think you got pissed off at me. So is it so it took me a little while to respond, then you're getting is it, like, panicky? You're like, oh my god. She's not gonna respond at all? That's what people typically do. Do — oh, sorry. Go ahead. Reach out. I ask I, I try to talk to people and then they just they leave.
So yeah. I mean, didn't feel good. When you reach out to like, when you have reached out to other people in the past, do they tend to respond really quickly? Is it like when you if you have a big, like, this is, this is terrible. I'm really in bad shape here. Do people kind of, like, move? They think I need help. Yeah. So then that totally makes sense why an hour is like, oh my god.
She like, your brain is thinking I don't care or I'm not gonna respond, something like that. And so that's how you end up sending me a whole bunch of texts after that. Right? Okay. Alright. So I think part of this might be the reality of how long and I might not have done a very good job of kind of explaining this to you. But you know how when I'm sitting here with you, I don't have my phone?
So I try really hard to kinda be where I am. So I am not kind of in front of my phone some of the time, and sometimes I'm doing this. Right? Like, it's during the day or whatever. Right? So sometimes I don't see it. Sometimes I wait because I wanna figure out what to say. I actually think pretty hard about what I write back, and so I'm not gonna be the person who moves in the second I hear from you, like, oh my god. Because I know that I wanna do a good job of responding. And I also this there's a little bit of behaviorism here.
You might not like this, but I'm gonna tell you this. What I want you to also learn is that the fact that it takes me an hour to get to you doesn't mean I'm not showing up. Like, your brain will learn that, you know, I can simultaneously care about you, wanna help you, and be doing something else. So even if I had the perfect thing to say perfect. It's never gonna be perfect. I'm just gonna do my best. Right? But you might not hear from me in five minutes.
You're unlikely to hear from me in five minutes. So, you know, I realized I didn't even point out, like, you fired me over text, and here you are. So I'm really glad about that. Do you know how you made that happen? What changed in between you saying, never mind that you're not helping me. I'm not coming back. How did, how did you come back today? I want this to be something I fucked up too.
So if we take the judgment out of that, like, if it's not a fuck up, was it like, I don't wanna quit this? I wanna keep trying to do this? Man, that that had to be really hard because you knew we were gonna have to talk about this, and nobody's gonna wanna talk about that. Really sorry. I appreciate it. I don't want you to leave. I'm not going anywhere. I just messed up again and again and again. I need help.